A Spider in the Web
Reviewed by Lady Keela Shanri
Click HERE to see a picture from the episode.
This episode had a few small problems, but it was basically pretty good. It was intriguing, forboding, and CREEPY as heck. And it had one of those trademark Babylon 5 "ominous endings" where you are left feeling freaked out and with more questions than you started!
This was a Talia episode, and since I know so little of her character and what eventually happens to her, that kind of makes in interesting right away. The plot was....how to describe it! I'll try my best, it was VERY complex:
Okay, it starts out straightforward enough. There is this guy, an old friend of Talia's, who comes on board to make some negotiations about expanding some company called "Future Corps" onto Mars in hopes of helping the Mars colony, with a woman who represents the Mars provisional government. Talia is there to make sure they're both telling the truth; she's been hired as her commercial telepath job. Anyway, all seems hunky-dory, the negotiations are doing pretty well...and then her old friend gets KILLED.
But that's not the whole plot-twist YET, my friends, oh, no.
You see, the guy who killed him zapped him with electricity out of his hand, and said "Free Mars" right before he killed him. Which means that the terrorist radicals are in on this.
Not complicated enough for you yet? Try this on for size--the lady who represents the Mars provisional government in the (now obviously defunct) negotiations is ALSO, or WAS, anyway, part of Free Mars! AND...she KNOWS the murderer! He's evidently her lover.
Enough for you yet? Tough, there's even MORE layers to this. At the beginning of the episode, a mysterious woman's voice is heard giving out ominous-sounding orders to the gods know who, with weird symbols flashing across her screen and only her mouth actually being shown on camera. Another mystery.
Then, there's the thing with the murderer guy himself. You see, he's not really Human. He's...DEAD. Really. He was captured right after being blown away by an EarthForce cruiser (he's in the Free Mars terrorist thingie, remember) and operated on. They made him into what Garibaldi so eloquently called a "cyber-zombie". You see, cybernetic experiments were conducted on Humans in the early 2230's, but they were eventually abandoned because it turns out that Humans cannot function with a machine in their minds; they go insane. BUT...for someone who is practically already DEAD, as with the murderer dude, you CAN do it. You telepathically scan them, then put the image of their own death into sort of a "repeating loop" into their subconscious so that it's all they can think about. This paralyses their will and allows the computer to think and act for them. The cybernetic implants repair their bodies gradually and keep them upright. And then they just BELONG to whoever turned them that way; they can program them to do ANYTHING they want. Grisly, huh?
Had enough? There's more. The PSI CORPS is what did it to him! THEY'RE the ones operating his program! Nifty, huh? What exaclty do they want with cyber-zombies? Exactly HOW much power are they trying to grab...and how much do they have ALREADY? Scary questions...
And another scary thing...when Talia finds out it was the Corps, and she is ASKED directly by Sheridan about what she discovered, she LIES and says she knows nothing about who altered the guy...
Is this enough for you yet? There's MORE...evidently there is an underground, EXTREMELY secret part of EarthGov, a "dirty tricks committee" as Sheridan puts it, called "Bureau 13". They are so secret, and so subversive, that it took Sheridan THREE YEARS to even figure out the organisation's NAME, and the guy who told him DIED shortly afterwards!
And the lady Psi Cop that Talia saw in the murderer dude's head, the one who was presiding over his operation...SHE'S part of Bureau 13, as we are shown at the end!
So, to sum up, we've got Bureau 13 working WITH Psi Corps to make and use "cyber-zombies", and they ALSO seem to have their tentacles (not THAT kind of tentacles, keep your mind out of the gutter!) into the Free Mars movement as well. And bear in mind that Psi Corps ALSO has a secret training base on...wait for it...MARS! As told to us in "A Voice in the Wilderness".
And Talia, who belongs to Psi Corps, knowing at least part of this story but lying about it...
The questions here, of course, are: Exactly WHAT are all these organisations planning? And are they REALLY working together, or is one or more of them just playing the other like a pawn, actually spying on them? And which one has the most power here--Bureau 13, Free Mars, or Psi Corps? Why would Talia, supposedly a GOOD guy, lie, and why is that Psi Cop lady listed in her files as "dead" when we KNOW she's not...?
Remember when I said that this episode was pretty good except for "a few small problems"? Well, the main one was the overacting of the murderer/cyber-zombie dude. But he was SUPPOSED to be twitchy, so I'll forgive PART of it...and that bit with him BEGGING Talia to "tell me WHAT I AM!!" was kinda touching. He was locked inside his brain, nothing but a computerised shell...and she broke THROUGH that and gave him his self awareness back, by accident. And it was TORTURE for him. Shudder.
The MAIN problem, though, is that it's so darn COMPLEX you gotta see it at LEAST twice to grasp what's going on, and even then, you're still a bit confused!
Add to all this some humour (Ivanova: "You know how I feel about telepaths." Sheridan: "How could I forget--you threw one out a third-story window on Io!" Ivanova: "There was a mattress at the bottom!" Sheridan: "I'm just going to ASSUME you knew that!"), some tender character development--Ivanova actually STOOD UP for Talia, Garibaldi seems to be getting closer to our blonde teep's heart--and the first appearance of a VERY important new character, Zack Allen--and you have the recipe for a pretty darned good episode.
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